Radiohead :: Kid A :: 2000

Everybody has heard or read some kind of statement claiming Radiohead to be the "world's greatest band," or more importantly, something along the lines of "the most important band of our time." I have a theory behind Radiohead's initial rise to the top of the Music Critic Mountain.

When they released their first album, Pablo Honey, the single "Creep" became the newest anthem of disaffected youth, taking up a torch that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had first set aflame. But unlike Nevermind, the rest of the album was pretty boring, a second single never really caught on and Radiohead was quickly tossed into a box with Haircut 100 and Wreckx-N-Effect labeled "one-hit wonders." Then Radiohead did something those other bands didn't. They released an amazing sophomore album, The Bends. When the album came out, it got some polite reviews befitting a one-hit wonder's followup album. Then the singles started to slowly catch on and listeners realized that it was possibly the best Rock album of the decade.

Then came OK Computer and every music reviewer that missed the boat with The Bends wanted to be the first one to announce that Radiohead was the future of music and all our lives depended on them. I don't want to take too much praise away from OK Computer. It really is a great album and if it had been total rubbish, the press probably would not have lauded it quite so much. However, it's far from a groundbreaking work of art. But for better or worse, OK Computer was the new greatest album ever and Radiohead became the band nobody was allowed to hate.

With the stature Radiohead had suddenly been raised to, nobody could wait for or imagine what move they would make next. As the release of Kid A approached, most of the songs got leaked in various stages and nobody really knew what to make of them. Many were assumed to be unfinished versions (which may have been the case) because it was just too weird for most people to handle. When the day finally came and folks packed into record stores for midnight listening parties, there seemed to immediately be a division of the love-it and hate-it camps with a lot of people in between just scratching their heads. The ironic thing is that the reason so many people were so confused is because they were being confronted by the very thing they tried to create out of Ok Computer. That is to say, everything they claimed OK Computer to be, Kid A actually was.

This was finally the album the world had been waiting for to wipe clean the face of popular music that had been smeared with the bubblegum turds of Britney Spears, NSYNC and Ricky Martin. The problem is that the music world didn't realize that sometimes it takes something pretty radical for any real change to come about. So the ultimate impact on the most popular of popular music was absolutely nothing. Kid A -- and its counterpart Amnesiac (released 8 months later) -- produced not one song to enter the Billboard charts. Pop and bad post-grunge rock ruled the radio still. But it created an undeniable stirring that would have to be measured in ways other than albums ales and Hot 100 charts.

Here was a band that had built its name on guitars and anthemic choruses. And here was their new album where many of the songs didn't even have choruses, lyrics were often hard to decipher and guitars were taking a back seat to electronics. The leap Radiohead made from Pablo Honey to The Bends was monumental, as was the next step to OK Computer. But it was the jump to Kid A that changed the game. I read an interview with Thom Yorke at the time when he seemed almost ashamed that people gave them credit for creating a new kind of music. I remember his statement that he felt Aphex Twin was moving music forward and that Radiohead was just sort of knocking it side to side. But what Yorke missed is that the new music he had helped create was birthed by taking the kind of music made by the likes of Aphex Twin and making it accessible and real. The inherent problem with electronic music is that it's missing a human quality. Radiohead has taken electronic music and inserted true human emotion; emotions ranging from love to hate to paranoia, depression and hope. And with that i believe they did, in a sense, create a new kind of music.

This is a band that knows you can not stick to a formula and grow in any real way. Sometimes risks pay off and sometimes they fall flat but without the risks, Art becomes stagnant. And when Art is stagnant, it's no longer Art; it's just a product. This is not a lesson that you can learn from U2 or Bon Jovi. Without the big hits and without selling their songs for iPod commercials, Radiohead is as well known as any artist in the world today. They show up on magazine covers, they're nominated for awards and can sell out any venue they play. And every album they release is awaited with more anticipation than any other band out there. Because while fans may expect the new Coldplay album to be good, nobody expects it to break any ground. When Radiohead releases a new album, listeners expect to hear the future. And that is why they might just be "the most important band of our time."
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